Africa worn out by war

A wave of democratisation, the overthrow of the Mobutu regime and signs of an African ’renaissance’ had raised high hopes for Africa’s future. So is it now going back to the ’bad old days’? Once again the continent is in a state of turmoil, with a dozen armed conflicts in progress, ranging from small local skirmishes to modern warfare. In freeing itself from foreign diplomacy, Africa seems to be sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Even so, there are a few encouraging signs. This year, five years on from the start of the Rwandan genocide, Nelson Mandela is preparing for a smooth hand-over of power and civilian government has been restored in Nigeria.

By the early 1990s Africa had been through some of the longest wars in its history. The liberation struggles in Angola and Mozambique had rapidly turned into civil wars. Eritrea fought for independence from the old Ethiopian empire and later Colonel Mengistu’s Marxist-Leninist regime. Local protagonists were backed by units from the Soviet Union and Cuba, arms supplies and financial aid from China, and mercenaries recruited by the American security services. Confrontations between the Soviet, American and even French fleets in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Red Sea were a reminder of the days when trouble was fomented from outside.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 it suddenly became possible to resolve situations that until then had seemed intractable. With active UN backing, efforts were made to negotiate settlements in the post-cold war conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. In Ethiopia Colonel Mengistu’s government was toppled by an alliance between the Tigrean and Eritrean liberation fronts, and Eritrea finally won its independence after a struggle lasting more than 20 years.

Two ethnically-based armed movements, Unita (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) and Renamo (the Mozambique National Resistance), challenged the “people’s democracies” set up by the Marxist liberation movements with the backing of the Soviet Union and the other third world or non-aligned countries. Their parties were officially recognised in 1991 and 1992 and multi-party elections monitored by the UN were organised under the peace agreements. Refusing to accept defeat in the presidential election in September 1992, Unita leader Jonas Savimbi resumed the fight for control of the country’s oil and diamond resources. In 1994 international pressure forced him to sign the “Lusaka accords” and a government of national unity was set up, with Savimbi himself granted “special status”.

(12) The many “problem” countries include Guinea, Djibouti, the Central African Republic, Chad, Togo, Niger, Cameroun and even Ivory Coast, where the present government is using a deliberately worded article that has opportunely been added to the constitution in an attempt to stop ex-prime minister Alassane Ouattara from standing in the presidential elections in 2000.

(13) Bechir Ben Yahmed, Jeune Afrique, 7 February 1999.

(14) Nearly two thirds of the people infected worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1998 AIDS killed two million Africans, a quarter of them children.

(15) The development aid committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) notes that the G7 countries, the richest countries and the main contributors, have cut their aid by 30% since 1992.